Is Robert Gordon underestimating the progress of automation?

This lack of multitasking ability is dismissed by the robot enthusiasts – just wait, it is coming. Soon our robots will not only be able to win at Jeopardy but also will be able to check in your bags at the sky cap station at the airport, thus displacing the skycaps. But the physical tasks that humans can do are unlikely to be replaced in the next several decades by robots. Surely multiple-function robots will be developed, but it will be a long and gradual process before robots outside of the manufacturing and wholesaling sectors become a significant factor in replacing human jobs in the service or construction sectors.

There were literally no check-in counters. The kiosk where I checked in printed my checked bag sticker. I carried it to a conveyer belt where it was scanned, confirmed and sent away.

It was the most efficient airport checkin I have ever seen, and I travel a lot.

Total time from first touching the kiosk to getting past security was about 5 minutes. Granted it might have taken a bit longer if the airport had been busier, but even then you’d be talking 10 minutes at worst.

BrettFebruary 18, 2014 at 3:49 am

The kiosks have been pretty great. I haven’t been in an airport where it was completely automated, but having the kiosks meant that they could just check your bags as opposed to having to do that and print your tickets at the same time.

RahulFebruary 18, 2014 at 3:58 am

How is a skycap’s duty anywhere close to a multifunction robot? A bag tagging machine seems closer to grocery self checkout, something we already do. The rest of baggage handling / routing is highly automated anyways.

I think Gordon is absolutely right in his observation: the biggest inroads robots have made is in structured / specialized / dangerous settings (assembly lines, warehouses, docks, welding, nuclear reactors etc.) Jobs with varied tasks during a workday (farm worker, construction, plumber, flight mechanic) have not seen as much robotization.

Not so much robotics as automation in general. Farms are run with a fraction of the workers as previous. I’m sure that trend will continue.

In residential construction, the current model of a swarm of people throwing together a wooden frame with a maximum 50-year useful life and a ramshackle collection of systems which are always in some degree of breakdown seems ripe for innovation.

RahulFebruary 18, 2014 at 9:15 am

Agreed. Automation yes. But what the robots visionaries got wrong is that the gains didn’t come out of multifunction HAL-like robots but specialized, automated, high throughput machines all controlled & co-ordinated by human masters.

Reading the abstract I’d just say: old age bias. Old people is more likely than young ones to describe situation where systems and things are falling apart. 50 year future technology forecast, oh my…….

Ray LopezFebruary 18, 2014 at 4:54 am

I second Axa. You have to ask the expert, not just some economist who believes low prices and increased output of commodities is the cureall. I work with technology and already I have experience with inventions such as: quantum computers that in theory can solve entire chess tree simultaneously; insect drones that run on nuclear pellets and can crawl half way around the world; and, my favorite, which nobody outside biotech believes: apoptosis (cell death) and how to delay the same. Re the last one already they have chick embryos that are over fifty years old alive, but the real secret is to go from in vitro to in vivo, say an injection that will keep you from aging. Some recent research points the way, but the good stuff is not yet published. But trust me when I say essentially some boffin has discovered, still in rudimentary form akin to travel by balloon vs travel by airplane, how to make humans immortal, or at least live to a very old age. Average is over indeed.

chipFebruary 18, 2014 at 5:00 am

We’re probably past the point where an individual can even assess the progress of technology. The combination of ever more acute specialization, new fields of research and accelerating pace of change are just too much to digest.

We will just find ourselves in a rising sea of technology, like a tide creeping up the beach. Not immediately evident, but relentless and significant nonetheless.

I haven’t been back to O’Hare in recent years, but curbside check-in at O’Hare was an interesting job in the 1990s. Chicago skycaps routinely made six figures from tips. They were all male, all black. They typically came from prosperous, respectable families. Their fathers were usually either influential (e.g., aldermen) or trustworthy (firemen) or skycaps themselves. And the skycaps were good at what they did.

RahulFebruary 18, 2014 at 6:09 am

How did one get that job? Sounds ripe for corruption / nepotism.

deariemeFebruary 18, 2014 at 6:17 am

If the nepotism is thorough-going enough, it protects the customer from corruption.

I suspect that skycaps being all black men is somehow related over the generations to a century ago when Pullman car porters on trains were all black men. That was a profession with high standards, good pay, and a lot of pride. Pullman porters played a sizable role in the civil rights struggle by distributing urban black newspapers to small black communities across the country.

ummmFebruary 18, 2014 at 6:17 am

The more work that can be automated, the more prosperous some of us will be. Technological progress and wealth creation is unstoppable. Now couldn’t be a better time to be above average. According to Charles Murray, we’re coming apart and I look forward to this.

It isn’t robots. It’s carry-on luggage, possibly driven partly by airline luggage checking charges, that put skycaps on the skids. It started with luggage with wheels. Robert Gordon possibly lives in an alternative universe.

I largely agree with the point being made, but baggage check-in is a terrible example. That could have been automated twenty years ago. We’ve had ATM’s for forty years now and that’s all that is required to replace the baggage check-in people. Robots are not needed. Is there a huge savings to be had? Nope. It is not even a rounding error for airlines. That’s what the non-business owners never get. I’m not wasting my time chasing fractions of pennies no matter how many times you chant the word “marginal” at me.

ummmFebruary 18, 2014 at 10:15 am

A few pennies and and there add up to a substantial amount of money for a company that does billions a year in revenue. That can make the difference between a stock rising on earnings report or falling 10%

GuestFebruary 18, 2014 at 10:29 am

Once you harvest those gains they are baked into future expectations forever. Business keeps some low hanging fruit around as a cookie jar reserve.

Like I said, spouting econ text book jargon is not persuasive to the guy signing the front of the checks. When replacing some of the baggage people with robots *really* shows up on the financial, then you get action. In the cost structure of an airline, that’s unlikely to happen. Like I said, it is a terrible example. Airlines and airports are not real businesses.

It’s one of those things everyone should experience. A US airport, and all of the businesses within, operate by a different set of rules from the world outside the airport. It’s like a college campus run by malevolent lunatics rather than benign lunatics.

bryan willmanFebruary 18, 2014 at 10:24 am

this is all a fine example of people being stuck on “automation” instead of “restructured process”

what changes in banking when large parts of the population get comfortable with computers and machines? humanoid robots that look like bank tellers? no, rather special robots which like your dishwasher or laserprinter do a smallish set of things well AND some part of the work is transfered to the customer.

which is followed by ever wider use of direct deposit and automated payments so that a large part of the human transaction volume of banking goes away.

same story for skycaps – make the traveler do the work, or use a carry on.

or do the damn meeting by web phone and skip the trip entirely

there will be huge waves of change, but they will be like replacing rivets with laid up carbon fiber, not building robots that run rivet guns.

spencerFebruary 18, 2014 at 11:20 am

Swiss Rail has a service where they will pick up your checked airline baggage and deliver it to almost any railroad station in the country within a few hours.

I had a horrible experience with it in Basil last summer because my bags did not arrive until 4:00 PM rather than the 12:00 noon time I was expecting.

It may not be that much of a technological innovation, but it can sure make traveling to Switzerland much easier.

You arrange it by snail or e-mail ahead of time and receive a big green tag to put on your bag at the US departure airport.

FinchFebruary 18, 2014 at 12:22 pm

That’s a huge improvement. The last time I was in Switzerland I had to lug skis through a bunch of train transfers. It was an awful experience.

BEIJING, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) — A Beijing-based Tibetology scholar has criticized the Dalai Lama’s Friday meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in the White House, saying it was another “anti-China farce.” “Once again, the Dalai Lama slipped into the White House Map Room for a so-called ‘unofficial meeting’ with Obama. This was another farce against China,” said Lian Xiangmin, a researcher with the China Tibetology Research Center, in a signed article.